SAN DIEGO – By almost every account, including his own, Randy Wolf isn’t the same pitcher he was in his previous stint with the Dodgers. The reconstructive elbow surgery, which was still fresh in his mind then, has had two additional years to fade from his consciousness, and he recently said he rediscovered a comfort level with his mechanics last season that had been missing for as long as he could remember.

One day soon, perhaps the Dodgers will reap the benefits of Wolf’s personal renaissance. But all they were left with after Tuesday night’s game, a 4-2 loss to the San Diego Padres in front of 20,035 at Petco Park, was a discomforting sense of deja vu.

Just as he did in his first Dodgers debut two years ago, Wolf walked a tightrope in the early innings and managed to survive. Just as he did then – also in the second game of the season – he quickly settled into a groove and began to dominate. And just as he did on that evening on April 3, 2007, at Milwaukee’s Miller Park, he went to the mound in the bottom of the sixth inning with a one-run lead.

That night, it was the Brewers’ Kevin Mench who erased it, slamming a two-run homer off Wolf from which the Dodgers wouldn’t recover. This time, it was the Padres’ Chase Headley, who yanked a two-run double into the left-field corner from which the Dodgers wouldn’t recover.

Wolf can only hope now that he can repeat the quick reversal of fortune he experienced after that rough beginning two years ago, when he wound up winning nine games before the end of June.

The other thing he can hope for is that he can avoid the premature ending he encountered that summer, when he went onto the disabled list with shoulder soreness just before the All-Star break and wound up having season-ending arthroscopic surgery.

After this game, though, Wolf was more interested in looking back on the previous three hours than in looking ahead to the next six months.

“I was falling behind in counts quite a bit, and that got me in trouble with my pitch count,” he said. “I just wasn’t able to make pitches. I have to be better than that and make better pitches, especially with runners on, and I just wasn’t able to do that. I felt all right, but one thing I needed was to be a little more aggressive (instead) of painting corners.

“If I had been more aggressive, I could have been more efficient.”

The result notwithstanding, it wasn’t an unmitigated disaster by any stretch, and it wasn’t that far from being a strong outing. Leading up to that fateful sixth inning, Wolf had retired eight consecutive batters.

But that groove had mostly been missing early on, and so were Wolf’s pitches. He faced a total of 11 batters in the second and third innings, when he walked three, gave up one run and had to pitch out of two jams – one of which ended on an embarrassing baserunning gaffe by the Padres’ Scott Hairston.

But that game-changing, sixth-inning rally began with a fateful decision by Wolf, who spent the first half of last season with the Padres and had firsthand knowledge of their left-handed-hitting first baseman, Adrian Gonzalez, one of the league’s most dangerous hitters.

At Wolf’s request, the Dodgers employed an exaggerated infield shift against Gonzalez, who wound up shooting an opposite-field single through the area where shortstop Rafael Furcal would have been standing if he wasn’t well to the right of second base.

“Randy wanted to use it there,” Dodgers manager Joe Torre said. “We ask the pitcher first. Even if we weren’t in the shift, it still would have been a base hit because (against Gonzalez) Raffy would have been playing closer to second base.”

Whether Torre was being honest or charitable, Gonzalez’s hit – his only one of the series thus far – ultimately led to the downfall of Wolf and the Dodgers (1-1).

It was, for the second time in three years, a disappointing start to Wolf’s time in a Dodgers uniform. But for now, that is all it was, and there is at least some reason to believe that is all it will be.

“I don’t know if he is 100percent different (from 2007), but his arm looks like it’s in better shape,” Dodgers catcher Russell Martin said. “I think he will do a great job for us this year. He is a good pitcher and a competitor, and he expects a lot of himself.”

He also expects a little more than what he gave the Dodgers the last time around.